Hundreds of Free Art E-Books

[Justin.]

please stucky

[jim b]

wow! what a great resource. this is a long shot, but does anyone know if any of these books have audio recordings? would love to listen to something while drawing.

[Coleb]

Do you all just save these to your harddrives? Burn CDs? Have external drives for saving stuff like this?

[briggsy@ashtons]

Thanks Bob and Justin. Bob, your torrent contains quite a few titles that are in copyright and readily available in print, so I hope you understand if I don't put it with the other links at the head of this page. There are good reasons why our mods would probably jump on me for going down that path here (a path which, I have to confess, does bear some briggsy footprints). Anyone who does want to go down that path need only google an author or subject with such magic phrases "parent directory" or "rapidshare" to turn up a whole world of ebook and video downloads that we won't be discussing in this thread!



jim b. if you want to listen to any of these pdfs you could try the "Read out loud" function in the View Menu of Acrobat Reader. I just went into Preferences and tried out the British male voice at a low speed and it wasn't TOO bad ... for a robot. Maybe someone knows of another text to speech program that does a better job.

The audiobook equivalent of Archive.org is Librivox.org. The site is relatively new and rapidly growing, and again, everything is free. Not much there in the way of art books as such yet, but there's a lot of other great stuff, including some real classics of history. I've just listened to what there is so far of Macaulay's History of England (truly awesome!), and I'm making a start on Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The readings are all done by volunteers and the quality is quite variable, but MOST are better than a robot. The start of the complete index is here:
http://librivox.org/newcatalog/searc...&action=Search



Coleb: 500 GB external hard drive, plus DVD backups of all new stuff as it comes in.


Finally, here are a couple of new art titles at archive.org that caught my eye. I haven't had time to really look at them yet, so all I can promise about them is that they have intriguing titles. The author of "Figure Drawing for Children" was herself the child of the important nineteenth century teacher and author of "Art Anatomy", William Rimmer.

Rimmer, Caroline Hunt, 1893. Figure drawing for children : papers of special value to all interested in the development of art among the children.
http://www.archive.org/details/figuredrawingfor00rimm

Abendschein, Albert, 1909. The secret of the old masters.
http://www.archive.org/details/secre...aste00abeniala

[Farvus]

Bump

Ellsworth, Evelyn Peters, 1917. Textiles and costume design
http://www.archive.org/details/texti...umed00ellsrich

Traphagen, Ethel, 1918. Costume design and illustration
http://www.archive.org/details/costu...nill00trapiala

Well. Lots of things has changed since 1917 in fashion and costume design but these books have some info about history of clothes. Could be useful for some character design especially in fantasy setting. The second one looks like it's more for artists.

[The Crazy Dude SRD]

Thanks Briggsy for providing these links to us, and to everyone else who has helped with adding to the content of this thread... I really hoped that someone will post the Bridgman's Book of a Hundred Hands...

[alti]

dammit how did i miss this thread, dammit.

Cheers for showing us the way brigsy.
Downloading sooooo many archetectural volumes... its rediculious.
this will keep me buisy for ages.

-alti

[briggsy@ashtons]

He he, alti, maybe you should look at this one too:
http://www.archive.org/details/first...llus00morarich

Thanks for the bump, everyone. Here are a few recent releases I've spotted, starting with five of my favourite Americans (apart from you guys). All have great galleries at the Athenaeum too, by the way.

Frank Duveneck

Heermann, Norbert, 1918. Frank Duveneck
http://www.archive.org/details/frankduveneck00heeruoft

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=391 (55 images)


William Merritt Chase

Roof, Katharine Metcalf, 1917. The life and art of William Merritt Chase
http://www.archive.org/details/lifea...liam00roofiala

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=106 (293 images)


Winslow Homer

Cox, Kenyon, 1914. Winslow Homer
http://www.archive.org/details/winslowhomer00coxkuoft

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=91 (458 images)


George Inness

Inness, George Jr,, 1917. Life, Art and Letters of George Inness.
http://www.archive.org/details/lifea...etter005237mbp

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=371 (181 images)


James McNeill Whistler (just the latest of many)

Hartmann, Sadakichi, 1910. The Whistler book; a monograph of the life and position in art of James McNeill Whistler
http://www.archive.org/details/whist...mono00hartiala

Macfall, Haldane, [1906?] Whistler
http://www.archive.org/details/whistler00macfiala

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=428 (180 works)





Anyone else here like Frank Brangwyn?

Furst, Herbert, 1920. Frank Brangwyn, R.A (woodcuts)
http://www.archive.org/details/frank...ynra00braniala

Sparrow, Walter Shaw, 1915. A book of bridges (illustr. Brangwyn)
http://www.archive.org/details/booko...sspa00sparrich




Finally, a booklet on Mucha's Slav Epic

Brooklyn Museum, 1921 - Historical paintings of the Slavic nations
http://www.archive.org/details/histo...inti00muchiala

[Valor]

Thank so much!

[Blue Severin]

Could a mod sticky this please? One of the most useful threads ever.

[briggsy@ashtons]

Thanks guys but as I've said before (1) a sticky in the Lounge is a big ask, and (2) it would be almost as good if people were to post their finds a bit more often.

Anyway I just got my first CA sticky over in Fine Arts, from Elwell no less. Woohoo!
Head over there and find out why:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=112049

[ikuru]

WOWSY! thanx for doing this.

[veeray]

omg ... thats whole lot of archive .. great stuff !

[Techno Junkie JC]

Oh wow! This is gonna be so helpful! I'm trying to learn more besides anime and this is SO helpful!

[Dizon]

Are the old links still working? I'm trying to download Arthur Guptill's book, but with no luck.

NOTE: Never mind, the download works now.

[MrHoboX87]

Briggsy you are THE man!!

Thousand thanks, I'll suscribe and return to this thread again and again and again!

[Dizon]

Briggsy! Do you still have "My Adventures as an Illustrator"? The download doesn't work anymore. How do you also batch download jpgs?

Could you also add this as well?

Chapman, J.G. (John Gadsby), 1808-1889. / The American drawing-book: a manual for the amateur, and basis of study for the professional artist: especially adapted to the use of public and private schools, as well as home instruction.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi....I0001&isize=M

This one is from Google books(there's a direct download link included): http://books.google.com/books?id=BoQ...g+book#PPP1,M1




Thanks!

[grenappels]

holy shit winslow homer is my FAVORITE!! 458 images this is the best~!

clicked a random one and fell in love http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/dis...age.php?id=994. this is gonna keep me up for a while...

[briggsy@ashtons]

What excellent taste in books you have patdzon! Chapman now has his well-deserved place on the list. See if you can get the Norman Rockwell by following the instructions below, but if you have trouble I can reupload my copy after Tuesday (I've just used up my month's bandwidth so I'd have to wait till then). It's well worth getting - I remember especially he tells some great tales of studying under George Bridgman at the Art Student's League.


Batch Downloading

Do you have a download manager that permits batch downloads already? If you're using Windows you could try Net Transport which I've been using for the last few years. I think it still has a free trial period. There are probably good freeware alternatives around, but some contain adware so do some research.

Now you need to find the image links. For sites like http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/ it's very easy - just right click on the image on the web page and go to properties. It's a little tricker for the Digital Library of India. For example for Norman Rockwell's My Adventures As An Illustrator you hopefully found your way to this link:

http://dli.iiit.ac.in/cgi-bin/Browse...barcode=141286

and were prompted to save the first tif file. Now you need to get the link to that file - if you're using Firefox you can copy and paste it from the "Properties" window. (Depending on how your preferences are set up this window either pops up automatically, or can be brought up by right clicking on the file in the "Downloads" window).
This is the link you get:

http://dli.iiit.ac.in//server25/data2/upload/server8/disk2/PAR_DVD%20S%20_BACKUP_61-120/1951_TO_1960-Cd082/141286_Norman_Rockwell_My_Adventures_As_An_Illustr ator/PTIFF/00000001.tif

And this is what you need to type into Batch Download window in Net Transport (or similar):

http://dli.iiit.ac.in//server25/data2/upload/server8/disk2/PAR_DVD%20S%20_BACKUP_61-120/1951_TO_1960-Cd082/141286_Norman_Rockwell_My_Adventures_As_An_Illustr ator/PTIFF/00000(*).tif

where (*) = 001 to 456


--------------------------------------------------

Glad you like the Athenaeum site, grenappels, and glad to here it's up again for that matter. It's a fantastic site but it has a habit of seeming to disappear completely for months at a time, so I'd strongly advise you to get everything you want there while you can.

[Dizon]

THanks! How about Arthur Pope's book on tone relations. Do you still have that? Does the book talk about seeing color values?

[briggsy@ashtons]

That Pope paper is now hosted on my googlepages site:

http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/colourlightandvision

Pope's papers describe a colour space founded on the system of Denman Ross (see links on the first post of this thread), and show how to use this space to visualize colour relationships under varying illumination, etc. His work is a major inspiration for many of the principles that I discuss on Dimensions of Colour, starting here:

http://huevaluechroma.com/101.php

[Elwell]

OK, it' stuck. Should it maybe be moved somewhere besides the lounge?

[briggsy@ashtons]

Thanks Tristan! I don't mind at all if it's moved - I found it hard to decide where to put it myself, and just went for the Lounge because I thought more people would see it here.

[Toxdel]

briggsy I love you!! thats not gay right? well anyway thank you so very much for this wonderful thread, and I also wanted to say your website on color has helped me understand so much. Your an inspiration dude.

[xisco cabrer]

great contribution briggsy! thank you very much

[AmontilladoAg]

Gah, such a treasure-trove! You rock, briggsy!

[briggsy@ashtons]

My pleasure, guys. Just let me know if you find something special and I'll add it to the list.

The search function, which was kaput for quite a while, seems to be working well now, and I can see quite a lot of new stuff.

[waronmars]

All loomis, Bridgman (I think)

http://processjunkie.blogspot.com/20...ooks-ever.html

The practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14264

Pen Drawing: An Illustrated Treatise by Charles Maginnis
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17502

[Kai H]

Do anyone have the Training the Memory in Art & the Education of the Artist by Horace Boisbaudran LeCoq?

[briggsy@ashtons]

All I know of is Boisbaudran's original paper in French (which I originally obtained from Gallica), if that is any use to you:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2mflzi2kumj